ferroptosis tagged posts

For decades, physicians have known that many kinds of cancer cells often spread first to lymph nodes before traveling to distant organs through the bloodstream. New research from Children’s Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern (CRI) provides insight into why this occurs, opening up new targets for treatments that could inhibit the spread of cancer.

The study, published today in Nature, found melanoma cells that pass through the lymph nodes pick up a protective coating, allowing them to survive high levels of oxidative stress in the blood and go on to form distant tumors.

Researchers have demonstrated that a fatty acid called dihomogamma-linolenic acid, or DGLA, can kill human cancer cells. DGLA can induce ferroptosis in an animal model and in actual human cancer cells. Ferroptosis is an iron-dependent type of cell death that was discovered in recent years and has become a focal point for disease research as it is closely related to many disease processes.

Jennifer Watts, a Washington State University associate professor and corresponding author on the paper, said this discovery has many implications, including a step toward a potential treatment for cancer.

“If you could deliver DGLA precisely to a cancer cell, it could promote ferroptosis and lead to tumor cell death,” Watts said...